Second Act

Eleven

Hearing that Moschus was in custody was a development Claudia hadn’t envisaged, and Orbilio’s announcement had caught her right off her guard. If the old sea dog talked… So far, his mouth seemed to have stayed shut tighter than a clam, but if Moschus was put to the torture…

Claudia shivered. There was only one option open to her now. Prevent the bastard from talking.

Two hours after the Festival of the Lambs had wound up, she returned home to find a problem in the boiler house filling the atrium with clouds of steam. Swirling in and out of the vapour, like ships in a fogbank, Caspar’s Spectaculars rehearsed with scripts that resembled limp lettuce and did not turn a hair. As Claudia tossed her cloak in the general direction of the porter, Drusilla, her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat, jumped down from the roof of the aviary. ‘Mrrrow.’

‘Yes, I know, poppet. Not much fun for you, is it, all these strangers over the house?’

Not much fun for the birds in the aviary, either. Furious that her territory had been usurped, Drusilla had vented her spleen by taking up sentry duty on top of the bird house. There were several advantages here. First, she was out of range of cat-strokers, although in truth these were few and far between. (Those individuals who’d naively imagined that Drusilla would benefit from their endeavours reeked of the opobalsam with which their wounds had been dressed.) Secondly, from her lookout on the top of the aviary, Drusilla maintained the territorial advantage in that she could still follow everything that went on in her domain. And thirdly, and by far the most rewarding, was the effect her presence had on the aviary’s twittering inmates.

‘Prrrrrr.’

As Claudia’s nails raked Drusilla’s backbone, she glanced across to where Caspar was putting the cast through their paces. The squawking in the aviary had subsided as the birds regrouped and preened their ruffled feathers, so that the words of the castrato came as sweet and clear as a mountain stream. Accompanying him on the flute was Renata.

‘Prrrr,’ Drusilla repeated, rubbing her head under her mistress’s chin.

‘I know,’ Claudia replied. ‘Isn’t his the voice of an angel? And just look at Felix!’

The bleached blond had reached the point in his balletic mime where Paris was weighing in his hand the golden apple engraved ‘To the Fairest’. That one human body could express so many emotions without the aid of speech was utterly amazing. Fear: of snubbing at least one, possibly two goddesses at the risk of divine retribution. Pride: the privilege of being asked to judge the contest. Anxiety: that he might make the wrong decision. Nor was Claudia the only person mesmerized by Felix’s performance. No mosaic had been swept more meticulously, no bronze statuette ever polished harder, no niche and crevice dusted quite so often. Small wonder the boiler house had set off so much steam, with no one in there to attend the fire.

Claudia took a piece of bacon that Doris had left on his trencher and fed it to Drusilla, while she drank the libation from the household shrine (and now the slaves would have another excuse to pass through the atrium slower than a sleeping snail) and nibbled on Ion’s chive bread.

‘Mrrr.’

Stuffed with ham, plus a few prawns that her mistress had found underneath the chive bread, Drusilla rearranged herself round Claudia’s neck to wash her whiskers. Up on the gallery, Ugly Phil appeared to be chiselling lumps out of the support rails to secure the pulleys for the backdrops. Claudia tried not to think about the cost of repairs, and turned her attentions to her Saturnalia banquet.

The festival covered four full days from the seventeenth to the twentieth of December, with the morning of the seventeenth devoted to the Great Sacrifice outside the Temple of Saturn in the Forum. Schools, law courts, even shops closed on this day, and the whole of Rome gathered to propitiate the God of Agriculture in the hope that the seeds already in the ground plus those about to be sown would flourish into a bountiful harvest. Afterwards, many citizens would join in the famous public banquet, where they’d dress up in funny hats, gorge themselves stupid, drink until they were ill, play party games and generally have a bloody good time. The merchant and noble classes celebrated in pretty much the same style, only they had the good sense to do it in the warmth and comfort of a private home. Preferably not their own. Otherwise, how could they expect to collect five to six pounds of silver plate from every supplier?

Claudia had given a lot of thought to the theme of her own Saturnalia banquet. ‘What do you think about setting it round the zodiac?’ she asked Drusilla.

‘Prrrr.’

‘Yes, I thought so.’

Beef to represent Taurus, the bull. Crabs for Cancer, mutton for Aries, mullets for Pisces and so on.

‘But it probably won’t do to serve spit-roasted virgins or stuffed water bearers,’ she told the cat, draining the last of the sacrificial wine. ‘This is where I’m relying on the expertise of our illustrious Cook.’

Aromas of smoked garlic, honeyed hams, poached pears and yeasty bread met her in the kitchen doorway. In the flurry of activity, bronze ladles clanged against baking pans, earthenware pots clunked together, baskets scraped the tiled floor. Someone winced, cursing in a guttural Teutonic tongue as they burned themselves on the water heater as they passed by, and voices became raised as two of the slaves fought over who should clean the cauldron, it was their turn yesterday, and who should get the job of pickling onions, you know it makes their eyes water. Twenty extra mouths were taking their toll, then. Not, perhaps, the most judicious moment to raise the subject of zodiac banquets with the Cook. Especially when that happened to be his guttural Teutonic tongue cursing the water heater back there. But this was the eleventh and there wasn’t time to spare.

Suddenly, she felt Drusilla stiffen against her collarbone. The purring stopped.

‘Hrrow.’

Her expression was that of a leopard on a fresh kill who had just spotted a lion approaching. Claudia followed Drusilla’s gaze and saw one of the actors sidling in through the back entrance, pinching the bottom of one of the kitchen maids before snatching a leftover rissole and skipping out the door to the slave quarters.

Skyles, of course.

Skyles, who had taken off his tunic in the Forum, ostensibly to spare Erinna’s modesty.

Skyles, who’d left the Forum two hours ago with the maestro and the others.

Skyles. Who had only just returned…

Tail wide and thrashing, Drusilla jumped down and ran off. Across the atrium, Claudia watched as the young castrato muttered something to Renata and scampered down the corridor as fast as his chubby legs would carry him in the direction Skyles had taken. Claudia followed. No doors sealed off the rooms in the slave quarters. Only Leonides and the Cook were afforded the luxury of privacy, the rest had to make do with heavy tapestries hung across the opening of their rooms.

‘Well?’ Periander’s girlish voice was rendered even higher with breathless excitement. ‘How did you get on, then?’

Skyles chuckled. It was a deep chuckle, made all the more resonant in a small room. ‘The minute I didn’t come home with the others, Peri my mate, you knew exactly how I got on.’

‘So tell me what happened.’

The actor laughed again. ‘For a boy with no balls, you have one helluva sex drive.’

‘For the last time, Sky, I’m not a boy, I’m sixteen, and will you bloody hurry before Renata comes looking for me. Who was she this time, eh? Was she patrician? What did she say when she picked you up? Where did she take you? Come on, Sky, what did you do?’

‘You’re a little pervert, you know that, Peri?’ There was a creak as Skyles made himself comfortable on the bed. ‘No, she wasn’t patrician,’ he said. ‘But she had a nice house on the Quirinal-’

Behind the curtain, pale blue and embroidered with dolphins and seashells around a rather portly Venus rising from the waves, Claudia eavesdropped on a concise but graphic description of his latest conquest’s charms and sexual foibles. That was the last time she’d look at this tapestry in the same light, she thought. Talk about a new dimension to the term sky blue.

‘Blimey.’ Peri’s breath came out in a whistle. ‘The dirty slut! And she made you shag her in the atrium, where anybody might walk in?’

‘I think that was the point of the exercise, Peri. The danger.’

‘Ju-p-es,’ Periander said, incredulity stretching out the single syllable, and Claudia could almost picture his rosebud mouth dropping open in astonishment. ‘You don’t half pick ’em, Sky.’

‘I don’t pick them at all. They pick me.’

There was a scraping sound, which Claudia identified as the boy scuffing his sandal on the flagstone, the sort of action people take before embarking on contentious issues.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Peri said carefully. ‘I mean, you’re a great guy and everything, but what I don’t understand is: why don’t these women throw themselves at Ion? No offence, Sky, but he’s tall, bearded, handsome as sin and with shoulders like a bleedin’ ox. You’d think the tarts would be tossing their knickers his way, but they don’t. Why always you?’

‘Haven’t a clue, mate,’ Skyles laughed. ‘What’s your opinion, milady?’

Bugger. Claudia pushed the drape aside. No point in asking how he knew she was there. Hell, perhaps every woman he encountered listened at his keyholes? Tapping her fingertip against the wooden door frame, she glanced at the eager-faced castrato sitting on the opposite bunk, plumpness bulging out his maroon and yellow tunic just as amazement bulged out his dark-brown velvet eyes. A greater contrast to the man sprawled out on his pallet, hands behind his head, his legs crossed leisurely at the ankle, could not be imagined.

‘Well?’ Skyles prompted quietly.

Peri was right. There was nothing out of the ordinary about Skyles. Sure, his body was lean and hard, but he was of average height, average build, and shaven skulls flatter very few men. Hardly a head-turner, then.

At least, not on paper.

But how does one define sex appeal? The white scars that criss-crossed his back? The craggy, lived-in face-a face far too old for a man of thirty-five? Maybe it had something to do with that taunting-the-world look in his eye? The air of indifference about what people thought of him? Or was it a combination of all these things?

‘Frankly, I have no idea,’ she said.

‘Liar,’ Skyles countered softly, patting the solid lump that passed for a mattress and indicating to Periander to make himself scarce.

‘Candied cherries?’ he asked.

Claudia curled her legs underneath her and wondered what Julia would m a ke of this. Rich merchant’s widow and commoner alone together in a windowless broom cupboard lit by a solitary candle. With the actor offering luxury goods to a woman who could afford the whole tree.

‘My mother told me never to take sweets from strange men.’

‘I strike you as strange, do I?’ He laughed softly under his breath. ‘Wine, then.’

It wasn’t a question. He leaned over, poured two mugs of red wine and handed one to her. The mug was chipped, and read ‘Drink me dry’ on the outside.

‘To success,’ he said, chinking the rim of his earthenware cup against hers.

‘In what?’ she asked. The wine was fruity and coarse, dry enough to strip paint, and Skyles wasn’t a man to water his wine. Or indeed any other aspect of his life, come to that.

‘You tell me.’

He shifted the weight on to one elbow, and now his thighs were but a sylph’s breath from her shins. She could feel the heat pulsing out from his tanned, naked flesh. His pallet smelled of cool, mountain forests. She sipped from the mug and tried to remember whether his gaze had ever left hers from the moment she’d stepped into his room.

‘Do they pay you, these women?’

He drew a deep breath, held it for a count of three, then exhaled slowly. ‘They offer, but I never accept.’

He waited for her to ask the inevitable, but Claudia remained silent, and the question hung in the air between them, heavy as a thundercloud, every bit as loaded.

In silence, coarse wine was sipped from chipped mugs.

*

The day commemorating the Festival of the Lambs was drawing to a close. Four times a year, in December, January, March and May, a ram would lay down its life as the priest invoked the sun’s rays to shine favourably on the soil, that there might be neither drought nor deluge and that Rome, therefore, would not starve. Fat chance of that happening, Orbilio thought, his weary legs tramping up Piper Street towards the Esquiline. A quarter century of peace had brought a stability to the Empire that its citizens had never known before, and with peace came prosperity. Slaves outnumbered Romans ten to one on farms, tending the land better than a wet nurse. Armies of labourers were constantly manuring, irrigating, pruning and weeding to ensure maximum harvests, optimum qualities, all at a price people could afford. Droughts and deluges might be a problem, but thank Jupiter, they were no longer a crisis, and this was down to the work of one man. Augustus.

His boast was that he had inherited a city of brick and had turned it to marble, eighty-two temples alone. Now Rome gleamed from every angle that the sun’s invoked rays hit, blinding in its brilliance with the gold on the columns and the bronze on the statues, but the glints reflected far more than one man’s building programme. These marbles and metals, the intricate frieze work, the skill of the men who laid the mosaics and painted the frescoes reflected serenity. A nation that was no longer burying young men in the prime of their life was a nation which thrived. It had grown strong on food that was as cheap as it was plentiful. On the fresh water that came in on the aqueducts and kept the city clean. On the sharp fall in street crime (December excepted).

Orbilio turned into Fig Street. The ancient tree from which the road got its name had long since withered away, but several of its cubs scrambled over the walls of the shops and apartment blocks, scenting the street with the smell of ripe fruit in the summer. From behind a shutter, he heard the late-night clack of a loom, a cough from an upstairs window. A pack of feral dogs loped down an alleyway, off to scavenge the middens.

But peace did not suit everyone, he reflected. Sextus Valerius Cotta was due to address the Senate, calling for more war, more expansion, more territories, more riches. Despite little support in the Assembly, Orbilio knew that greed was a strong puller of crowds. The Arch-Hawk had many a supporter among ordinary citizens, especially those whose lives could do with a bit of enriching.

‘Why should the Empire rest on her laurels,’ they cried, carrying his echo into the streets, ‘when we can get our hands on the gold mines of Dacia?’

Living in death-trap tenements, where burglary was rife and fire claimed victims every night of the year, Cotta’s followers saw a future in which they paid fewer taxes and less tribute once the shipping revenues from the Black Sea fell into Roman hands. They saw valuable minerals from the Orient rebuilding their slums the way the spoils of war had raised temples of marble from brick. They saw Indian spices paying for water coming straight to their courtyards, Britannia paying for their sons to be educated, African campaigns providing them with beds stuffed with feathers not straw, and where the only thing that moved on the mattress was the occupant, not the fleas.

‘Rome can win,’ they rallied. ‘Our army is the best in the world, we have wealth on our side, strength in discipline, let’s not waste the opportunity.’

Impoverished men with impoverished vision, they couldn’t grasp the Emperor’s argument that strength lay in holding on. In reinforcing ties with one’s neighbours, rather than testing them. Strength lay in trade. In security. In peace. Only with stability could the Empire stand firm. One had to consolidate before one moved on.

‘Bullshit,’ the crowed bayed. ‘We’ve done it before, we can do it again, the eagle and the hawk are invincible.’

All Orbilio could hope for was that, this close to Saturnalia, Cotta’s incitements would fall on deaf ears. Young or old, rich or poor, sick or healthy, this was a season when people were happy and heaven knows, no month matched December for festivals. Eighteen, to be precise, with chariot races, dancing, donkey derbies and banquets, processions, dedications and music. This would herald a New Year. A fresh start for everyone. Halcyon days, indeed.

And on the loose, the Halcyon Rapist.

At the top of Fig Street, Marcus paused to tickle the ears of a bright-eyed ginger kitten and found himself trapped as the kitten rolled over and demanded a belly rub, squirming and purring with pleasure.

‘It’s all right for you, you rascal. The most you ever have to do to keep vermin off the streets is chase rats.’

At which point, the kitten discovered that toga hems were the gateway to a wonderful playground, and it was with considerable difficulty that he disengaged the sharp little claws and repositioned the squirming bundle back on the pavement. Being a kitten, of course, and not a puppy, it instantly dismissed its new acquaintance in favour of phantom moths, squirting up the fig tree like liquid.

The streets were eerily quiet. The fourth Lamb Festival of the year was also a holiday for beasts of burden, so no delivery carts rattled over the cobbles tonight, and no plod of oxen or whinny of mules broke through the silence. Only the odd creak of a barrow, the off-key song of a late-night carouser in the distance, the shuffle of a funeral bier as it was carried away for cremation unmourned. Walking these silent streets without even his own shadow for company, Orbilio could see how a young woman could be hauled into an alleyway and raped. But nights like this were rare in Rome. Day and night the city bristled with frantic activity, and it was a well-worn joke that more people died from insomnia than the plague. Moreover, the rapist snatched his victims in daylight.

Nor were these, strictly speaking, the Halcyon Days. Officially, they didn’t start until the fifteenth of December, bridging the seven days either side of the winter solstice, and today was only the eleventh. The name Halcyon Rapist came from the animal himself.

‘Remember well your halcyon lover,’ he told his victims, before launching into a string of obscenities so vile that the girls couldn’t bring themselves to repeat it.

Last year, this self-styled halcyon lover had committed fourteen vicious assaults over the holiday period, with the exception of the four days of Saturnalia itself, his last rape falling on the final the halcyon day. A pattern which, goddammit, was repeating again.

Head down, his toga drawn close against his body for warmth, Orbilio turned into his own street just as the herald called the midnight hour. It had been a long day. Trying to find witnesses and not succeeding. Trying to convince himself it was a copycat crime-and not succeeding there, either.

What would he say, what could he say, to the mother of the man he’d sent to face the lions?

Round and round, like donkeys on a treadmill, his thoughts had been tramping the same ground. Stale thoughts, because he’d gone through this process last year and was finding nothing new this time round. His only clue was that the four days ‘off’ suggested the killer couldn’t get away during Saturnalia, but dammit that applied to half the men in Rome. Which, at a rough count, left him with a quarter of a million potential suspects. Mother of Tarquin, he needed to sleep. Perhaps in the morning he might be able to get a handle on this. Find a new angle to explore. A crack to probe.

Glancing up as he approached his own house, he blinked. And blinked again. There, in the middle of the street, a woman was…dancing. Not a drunken sway, or some spontaneous burst of emotion expressing itself in a quick tap of the feet followed by a spring in the air and maybe a click of the heels. This was professional choreography at work. He paused. There was something vaguely familiar about the sinuous Egyptian ballet. About the plaited Cleopatra wig, the silver breast band and tight fringed skirt that barely covered her modesty, the shapely legs that seemed to go on for ever. Then he remembered. Two nights ago, at his cousin’s house, this girl had been hired to dance for the all-male party.

‘It’s Angelina, isn’t it?’ He vaguely remembered his cousin introducing them.

The dance stopped abruptly. In the light of the torches that burned in sconces either side of his front door, the beads in her black wig shone like jewels.

‘Marcus!’ She was breathless after her routine, making her pretty breasts heave in a most interesting rhythm, and he couldn’t help noticing the effect the cold air had had on her nipples.

‘What are you doing here?’ He glanced around, noticed her cloak rolled up against his doorstep and flung it round her shoulders.

‘Well, I was rather hoping you were going to invite me inside.’ Her eyes were bright, either from cold or excitement, and he had a sinking feeling as to which of the two was the culprit.

‘I, er-’

Debating whether the offer of money would offend her, Orbilio was saved the bother. She pulled off her wig, shook her head and a cascade of honey-coloured curls frothed around her ears like a halo. Mother of Tarquin, the pixie!

‘You stood me up last night, you naughty boy.’ She combed her fingers through her hair with professional ease. ‘I had dinner waiting and everything, but you didn’t even send me a note.’

Shit. ‘It was the same thing tonight,’ he said truthfully. ‘I didn’t finish until midnight.’

‘Yes, I know, you poor pumpkin.’ Angelina linked her arm with his and tousled his fringe. ‘You’re working on those halcyon rapes. I heard. That’s why I came to you, instead of you having to trail over to my place. Makes more sense, doesn’t it?’

‘Angelina-’

He remembered chatting to her at his cousin’s house, where one thing had obviously led to another and, fuelled by wine, he’d ended up in her bed. But what, for him, had been a one-night stand clearly meant more to her.

‘Angelina, we need to talk.’ Not inside his own house, either. ‘There’s a tavern three streets away with a crackling log fire, we can warm you up there and, er… ’

He let the sentence trail. Milo’s tavern would be quiet tonight, without the delivery trade. Orbilio would be able to let her down gently over a meal as well as anywhere, he supposed.

‘That sounds absolutely wonderful, darling.’

Angelina stood up on tiptoes and planted an affectionate kiss on his cheek. This, he realized dully, wasn’t going to be easy. And he had to be up early, as well. Personally, he blamed the wink. Women obviously did like that sort of thing.

*

The sound of dogs barking across the street woke Claudia from sleep. Any other time and she would not have heard them. The clatter of delivery wagons, the crack of bull-whips, the shouts of the drivers, the braying of mules would have muffled any complaints by angry dogs, and noise was a lullaby to Claudia. Without it, the night was eerily quiet. Unnatural in this city of chaos and turmoil. But even beasts of burden deserve a holiday, she supposed. And slept fitfully as a result.

The barking grew louder. More urgent. Then other dogs joined in, as dogs always will, including the mastiff next door. Claudia slipped out of bed, pulling the warm blankets up round her shoulders. Something was up. And now a different sound had joined in the chorus. A metallic clamp-clamp-clamp, the jangle of armour, the sharp bark of military orders. A blast of bitter cold air made her gasp as she opened the shutter. There was damp in the atmosphere. Below her balcony, the street was a blaze of light from the torches of householders and slaves who had streamed outside to see what was going on.

What was going on was that the linen merchant over the way had called out the army. There had been two men loitering in the street all day, he reported, and after dark they remained in his doorway. Any other time and he would have moved them on, he insisted, but his steward had noticed two more round the corner, all four armed with daggers and cudgels.

Not now they weren’t. One large bruiser was being held in an armlock by a tough-looking legionary with a scar down his cheek, while the second suspect was being chained hand and foot.

‘It’s a damn lie, this rumour that I keep my life savings in a wine jar down in the cellar,’ the merchant told the sergeant. ‘I use the temple depository like everyone else, but thieves don’t always believe what they’re told, do they, officer, and I have my wife and five children to think of, not to mention my mother-in-law living with us, as well as the wife’s sister and her three young nippers and a cousin up from the country.’

As he paused to draw breath, another group of soldiers came tramping round the corner, dragging two more heavies between them. Blood poured from one of the men’s heads, its bubbling stream blinding him as it poured over one eye and dripped off his chin. The other one was missing a boot.

‘Got ’em, sarge,’ one of the legionaries puffed, prodding one of the prisoners in the small of the back with his fist. ‘They tried to make a run for it, but we got ’em.’ He was proud that years of hard physical training had given his footsloggers the edge.

‘Are these the men you saw earlier?’ the sergeant asked the linen merchant’s steward.

‘Definitely. I remember that one, because of the birthmark.’

‘Then you four are under arrest for intent to burgle and rob. Take ’em away, corporal.’

‘But we wasn’t-’ That was as far as Bleeding Head’s protest got. One of his companions landed a sound kick on his shin, which silenced him immediately, just as Missing Boot growled a warning which Claudia couldn’t hear.

‘Is it safe, do you think, officer?’ the linen merchant whined. ‘Only there are four women and eight children inside and-’

‘Perfectly safe,’ the sergeant assured him. ‘But just in case there’s more in the gang, I’m leaving two men here to stand guard for the next couple of nights.’

‘It’s not true about my savings down in the cellar,’ the linen merchant called after him. ‘I don’t know where these rumours come from.’

Probably because it wasn’t a rumour, Claudia thought, staring down at the now empty street. The old miser begrudged paying the temple a fee for holding his valuables safe, no wonder people were always trying to rob him. There had been at least five previous attempts that she knew of.

Except this was no bungled robbery.

She’d recognized Bleeding Head and Missing Boot immediately. The scum from the slum. The thugs whose paws had mauled at her flesh. Whose stale breath had been forced into her nostrils.

Butico, goddammit, had posted a warning.

Only a fool would ignore the message.

Pay up or I’ll take my eight grand in kind, he was saying. The bastard wasn’t bluffing. Like a shark, he sensed blood in the water and was moving in for the kill. Claudia saw him sending in his thugs to strip her house of its rare woods and marble, trashing whatever they liked in the process, raiding the storerooms, pillaging artworks, and with a bailiff to legitimize the process by undervaluing the goods as they went along.

That he was able to do this was because he had the backing of the Guild of Wine Merchants. With the Widow Seferius bankrupt and humiliated, her business would go down the sewer with her.

Bastards, bastards, absolute bloody bastards.

Still. First thing in the morning, she would send Butico the three thousand sesterces ‘profit’ she’d made from Moschus. That would keep the dogs at bay and she’d just have to take it from there.

Claudia closed the shutters and climbed back to bed, but the herald had called another hour before she finally drifted back to sleep.

It’s unlikely her eyes would have closed at all, had she known she was separated by just a few bits of bricks and mortar from a killer.

*

The Digger had also been woken by the rumpus. Everyone had.

The Digger also lay awake long after the disturbance had died down, but, unlike Claudia, the Digger did not get back to sleep.

Killers do not know the luxury of peace of mind.

*

And the body in the grave nodded knowingly.

‘You’ll never get away with my murder,’ she sneered. ‘They’ll find you in the end. One way or another, they’ll find you and then you’ll have to pay.’